Now, if the FBI does not bring criminal charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in connection with her private email server in her home, she may emerge as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 2016 -- to run against Trump.
Clinton herself introduced village imagery in her book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (1996). However, thus far in the 2016 primary campaign, she has not been using village imagery. (She herself did not grow up in a village but in suburban Chicago. For a tribute to village life in Nigeria before the British Empire made inroads that irreversibly modified their village life, see Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, mentioned above.)
But the point of her book is to remind us that we grow up in certain human contexts and that our personal identities, as a result, emerge from and include, for better or worse, the human contexts in which we grew up.
So, on the one hand, our personal identities do indeed emerge from the choices we make in our decision making.
But, on the other hand, our personal identities do indeed emerge from certain human contexts in which we grew up. Those particular human contexts are the givens involving time, place, and circumstances in which each person's individual identity emerges and grows with their free choices in their decision making. Put differently, our personal decision making is conditioned by the circumstances and contexts in which we grew up.
So for us Americans, American culture provides the overall human context in which Americans emerge.
The ideals of the Declaration of Independence provide certain orientations in which our collective American identity evolves and in which, in some measure, our personal identities as individual Americans evolve.
Now, in the Hebrew Bible, the covenant is associated with Moses and the great story of the exodus from Egypt and the wandering in the desert. But the ancient Hebrew prophets also helped deepen their people's understanding of the covenant, most notably in their calls for economic justice -- a theme reiterated recently by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in his presidential primary campaign -- by Pope Francis in his recent eco-encyclical. The ancient Hebrew prophets who cried out for economic justice articulated prophecies of punishment and salvation.
Today the memorable spirit of the ancient Hebrew prophets is carried on by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the United Kingdom, who recently received the 2016 Templeton Prize, in his op-ed titled "We need morality to beat this hurricane of anger" in UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph (dated July 2, 2016). The hurricane of anger that inspired the vote for the UK to leave the European Union is the equivalent of the prophecies of punishment in the ancient Hebrew prophets. Rabbi Sacks' call for morality is the equivalent of their prophecies of salvation. Actually, he expresses his call for morality as a call for identity and morality. And I am writing about our collective American identity, which I see as an emerging process.
However, also in the Hebrew Bible, we find the written record of an anonymous prophet whose thought is embedded in the book of Isaiah, presumably because the later anonymous prophet was part of a school of disciples who helped keep alive the thought of the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem (see the book of Isaiah 1-39). Known as Second Isaiah (40-55), the anonymous prophet is most famous for four passages known as the Servant Songs, the most famous of which is the fourth and lengthiest one, known as the Suffering Servant Song (52:13-53:12). (The four Servant Songs are Hebrew poetry. They may have been sung.)
In the deeply informed book Israel and Revelation (1956), the political scientist Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) notes that the anonymous prophet known as Second Isaiah does not articulate any prophecies of punishment. But why not? Voegelin suggests that the salvation on this earth that other ancient Hebrews prophets had expressed in their prophecies of salvation. He says, "redemption [salvation on this earth] has been experienced by the prophet [Second Isaiah] for Israel, as its representative" (page 509).
But so what? Voegelin says, "the history of Israel as the people under God is consummated in the vision of the unknown genius, for as the presentative sufferer Israel has gone beyond itself and become a light of salvation to [hu]mankind" (page 515).
Now, the American myth of the self-made man does not play up the theme of suffering that emerges in the Suffering Servant Song.
Long-suffering Americans tend to gravitate toward the exodus story in the Hebrew Bible.
But long-suffering Americans known today for advancing identity politics and multiculturalism might also be able to identify with the suffering of the Suffering Servant in the Suffering Servant Song.
In a similar way, the aggrieved white people who advance white identity politics today might also be able to identify with the suffering of the Suffering Servant in the Suffering Servant Song.
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